Troops Retake Northern City of Khan Sheikhoun

Fighting continues to escalate across Syria over the past two days, with major shelling reported in Daraa yesterday and an offensive today in which the military retook the city of Khan Sheikhoun, another strategically valuable town along the nation’s major northern highway.

Rebels claimed that today’s offensive against Khan Sheikhoun left 25 people dead, and that the military had also captured “scores of others.” This, along with claims of 95 killed in yesterday’s shelling suggests the fighting is not slowing down.

The rebel figures on death tolls for Thursday claimed 24 soldiers, three rebels and the rest were civilians. Such figures are often disputed, Particularly as various rebel groups often describe everyone seen as pro-regime as a “soldier” and describe only certain of their own fighters as rebels.

The Syrian state media has mostly disregarded overall death tolls in their reporting, instead focusing on the strategic value of military gains. Today, those comments focused on complaints about Turkey’s use as a staging ground for the rebels, which of course is a key reason why the town of Khan Sheikhoun was a focus.